An announcement that the U.S. Marine base at Quantico, Va., has refurbished a building to be used as a prayer room for Muslim soldiers and civilians on base is a “bad signal,” one critic has concluded.
The Marines announced earlier this summer that one of the buildings on the base had been repainted so that Muslims would have a place to pray and hold religious services. The new “Islamic Prayer Center” is the first of its kind on a Marine base, and “serves to express the Marine Corps’ recognition of diversity among service members and the commitment to provide continued support to all Marines regardless of race, religion, ethnicity or gender,” the base announcement said.
However, Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer said he wonders why the Marines do not seem concerned such facilities might to used to generate anti-American sympathies. “It’s going to go up as part of a testament to American multiculturalism and so on without any indication of the possibility that this could be a source of what we’re fighting against,” he said. “It just sends a bad signal.”